Saturday, July 26, 2008

The New Italian Holocaust

Italian sunbathers IGNORE dead gipsy children on the beach.Under the watchful eye of new Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, the countries hundreds of thousands of gipsies lined up to have their fingerprints taken. It's part of his new plan to have every gipsy in the land registered....and those that don't belong sent out.In addition to performing health checks on the nomads, Red Cross officials are finding out the ethnic backround, age, place of birth, and more to put on a national computer system set up to organize the Romas.

Thousands of migrants have stormed the Italian border since 2004, when border access greatly increased due to the EU expansion.

This is scary not because they want to identify the Romas, but because Berlusconi warns of a "Roma Emergency" in the ex-fascist nation. He goes further, attributing half of Italy's attempted murders, muggings, and robberies to the Gipsies.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni was quoted as saying the fingerprinting census is essential to discover 'who is entitled to be here and who is not'.

Observers including the Roman Catholic Church, the United Nations, Roma and Jewish leaders condemned Berlusconi's actions. The registry is a chilling reminder of the Nazi registration of Jews and gipsies introduced by Adolf Hitler, with the support of Mussolini.

Maroni went on to say that those Romas who are Italian will be given better living situations, "away from rats." Nothing was said of those not entitled to be in Italy, but rumor has it that the new right-wing government is looking to destroy non-sanctioned Roma camps.

Most of the Gipsys without Italian citizenship are not citizens....anywhere.A Gipsy elder at a camp in Naples, 48-year-old Nihad Sajovic, said 'We want to put down roots; we want to stop fleeing because our people have been doing that since the War began in 1939. At the end, the Jews were given money and a new land. We still have nothing.'

The Red Cross's Mr Barra said: 'We know that people are pointing and saying that this is reminiscent of the Nazis. But that is collective paranoia.'We want to get these children vaccinated, give them health checks and medical cards.'That is all this census is about. We are building bridges and not walls.'

Whatever the truth of this, Italy's history cannot be forgotten. It was as early as 1926 that Mussolini first expelled gipsies, calling them 'sub humans'.It is thought that in the next 20 years, more than one million Roma people were killed in the extermination camps of Europe, alongside the Jews.